Stories from the Fringe: 'Word Made Flesh'
By Chad Fasca
Can evangelical Christianity be reconciled with homosexuality? C. Paul Canaday, creator of "Word Made Flesh," a solo piece presented at this year’s New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC), attempts to answer that question in his story of a fifteen-year-old boy named Joel’s journey into spiritual and sexual maturity.
Like the play itself, the title of the piece, "Word Made Flesh," is meant to work on many levels. Literally, Jesus is considered to be the ‘Word of God’ made flesh. The concept comes from the Bible’s Book of John. But, on a personal, spiritual level, Canaday sees it as God made human and scripture brought into real, everyday life.
"You’ve got this idea of Jesus encompassing two (realms)," Canaday says, referring to the idea of one entity being both of heaven and of earth simultaneously. "However, in evangelical Christianity, spirituality and sexuality are seen in direct conflict with each other," Canaday says.
"Word Made Flesh" focuses on Joel’s attempt to find balance between these sides. It’s an attempt that Canaday understands all too well, having gone through it himself. For him, reconciling the two sides took the better part of ten years. In bringing this conflict to the stage, Canaday has condensed the arc to two and half years. Along the way, Joel encounters five characters: his youth pastor, his best friend from a youth group, his girlfriend and his first homosexual encounter. Joel must wade through these relationships to realize how his beliefs and feelings can accommodate each other.
Of course, writing and performing a piece as personal as this one is not without its pitfalls.
"The danger of a piece like this is that it can be self-indulgent," Canaday says, referring to the semi-autobiographical nature of his solo piece.
To offset this pressure, he uses humor, but is careful to keep it away from making fun of people in the evangelical movement, such as casting them in an Elmer Gantry preacher-type-mold.
"The fact of the matter is that these are good people with good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions and that’s where the comedy is; the good intention turned on its head."
Developed in San Francisco over a two-and-a-half-year period, "Word Made Flesh" is Canaday’s first foray into solo performance work. He credits the San Francisco-based Writers Who Act workshop taught by Anne Galjour as being instrumental in helping him developing the work. Canaday started working with Galjour, a soloist who performed the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1997, in 1999. In April of this year, he and his partner, both actors, moved to New York to further pursue their careers, leading to the East Coast premiere of "Word Made Flesh" at this year’s FringeNYC. He staged the show twice in San Francisco.
Canaday wants to put this story out there for people to see and to help push the conversation beyond the 'apology for biology' approach to a true understanding of how Christian beliefs and homosexuality can coexist.
"At the end, I come to a point where I state my own theological approach to sexuality and what I consider to be important," Canaday says.
Central to this theology is the reversal of the concept that morality is the basis of love, or that morality is somehow more important than love. Canaday emphasizes love as the basis of morality in hopes of turning the corner for sexual understanding within the Christian church. He may also get a chance to take that message directly to church-goers. Through his director, James Ashcraft, he has received interest from St. Clement’s Episcopal Church about performing the piece there. The two have discussed possibly expanding the piece into a full-length work and running it during Gay Pride Week next year.
"It is a distinct possibility," Canaday says. "Depending upon what happens at the Fringe, we will see how I feel."
